Former USMNT ‘keeper Brad Friedel discusses playing in the LA Galaxy and the rising standard of MLS

In an interview with Fox Soccer’s Mark Rogondino, longtime US International goalkeeper Brad Friedel spoke about playing in the United States and facing the LA Galaxy with Tottenham Hotspur in Tuesday’s friendly. A former UCLA Bruin and native of Ohio, Friedel has spent one season with Tottenham after stints at Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers and Liverpool among others.

Friedel also amassed 82 caps with the US national team and was the goalkeeper for the US during their run to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup.

Friedel’s quotes from the interview below...

(On coming back to America…)

FRIEDEL: “It’s strange, the only time that we’d come to the States when I was with Blackburn, I’d always seem to miss out so it’s nice to come back especially to LA. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen some of my old friends and I’ll see a couple of them tonight so it’s good.”

(On his preparations for the upcoming season with Tottenham…)

FRIEDEL: “Personally, I just get through preseason and make sure that I don’t have any injuries. I think that mainly what the boys do is that you just want to pick up fitness. Having a league that’s in the middle of the season also helps us because their fitness levels are a lot higher than ours are. Having a new manager, he’s going to want to use this game to see all the players, which is very important for him as well. All in all, coming in on tours like this are a good bonding experience with the new staff and the new players so these are very good.

(On facing the LA Galaxy and the rising standard of MLS…)

FRIEDEL: “For many years, many people were asking about MLS and they were always asking about the [contract] figures that they saw in the paper with Beckham so they’d ask me, ‘can you get me there? can you get me there?’ But the notoriety of MLS has come on incredible amounts especially with Thierry Henry and [Robbie Keane] coming over here and David Beckham of course. Also the likes of Landon Donovan when he comes over and does really well at Everton and that picks it up and Keano did really well with Aston Villa when he came back. All those things help the league. We have take our hat off to all the financial people who have kept in the game with MLS because there were a couple of times where it was on really shaky ground and they’ve stuck with it and put a really good product on the field now.”